It is funny the way that the athlete infringes on the rationale of the young mind, today I do not get too caught up in dreaming about the wonder of an athlete. I do not believe in their perfection.

I used to though, most certainly.

Michael Jordan was, to a small, white kid in Dallas Center, Iowa, a sort of God.

He breathed life into athletics.

He made it more than real.

He asteticized the game for me, made it conceptual. It worked because of a combination of his own unlimited brilliance and my own limited mind. I did not understand that Jordan loved to gamble, that Jordan had a woman on the side, and I didn’t care that Jordan was a creation of market research. Jordan was, and is, real to me in a sense that transcends those aspects of humanity that we come to understand as we get older - I am a child when I think of him.

For my brother Joe, it was another athlete. Another great athlete, and to this day it boggles my mind how it happened, but to my brother, that athlete was Ricky Henderson.

To another small, white kid from Dallas Center, Iowa, he was another sort of God.

The Upper Deck card where Henderson is wearing the sun-lit Oakley’s, holding the 939th base he stole above his head, with a look of pure, unbridled competition and joy on his face…that was the epitome of Ricky, that was the altar.

If I was deciding today, I would probably pick Henderson as my guy, too.

Henderson is too gifted, too wonderful a sound-bite, too unique a player to not be appreciated by any true sports fan. He is just a little bit more real than Jordan. Of course, I am old now, and I am not at my grandmother’s house watching Jordan hit six three-pointers in the first-half of game one of the ‘92 finals. You couldn’t have changed my mind on that day.

They both were two of the best ever, Jordan gets the nod as the greater in his own game, and rightly so, but that doesn’t diminish Henderson one ounce. Jordan won six championships, Henderson won two. Jordan won five MVP’s, Henderson only one. Jordan was a six-time Final’s MVP, Henderson was once. Jordan went to 14 All-Star games, Henderson went to 10.

They both left the game a few times, Jordan to retirement, Henderson to the minors (Jordan went to the minors as well, but we can forget that), and they both came back a few times.

Jordan had his first comeback, while still in his prime, where he won three more championships. His second, true, late comeback - where he we found out that he just couldn’t turn his back on the game was a little less gratifying, but none the less necessary to understand that Jordan and Ricky they pumped the same blood. He was old, still gifted, but he struggled with the Wizards, and looked human.

Henderson on the other hand won the MLB Comeback Player of the Year in 1999 after he hit .315 with 89 runs scored and 37 stolen bases, Ricky was 40-years-old.

Jordan is the career NBA scoring average leader at 30.1 points per game, and the career post-season scoring average leader at 33.4 points per game.

Henderson is the all-time leader in runs scored, walks (Barry Bonds does not exist), and single-season and career stolen bases in baseball history. He is fourth in games played, 10th in at-bats, and 20th in hits. There is a case that Henderson is the greatest overall offensive talent in the history of baseball. His stolen base records (130 in 1982!?) are starting to look more and more like Wayne Gretzky’s point marks in the mid-’80’s, a statistical aberration that will never be approached, ever, again.

People say that the homerun and hits are the name of the offensive game, but there has to be room for the man who crossed home more times than anyone else in baseball.

Charlie Metro’s quote about Henderson is about as odd a piece of praise as you will ever hear, it is cloaked in the guise of scouting but it is really a mystery-tale:

“I did a lot of study and I found that it’s impossible to throw Rickey Henderson out. I started using stopwatches and everything. I found it was impossible to throw some other guys out also. They can go from first to second in 2.9 seconds; and no pitcher catcher combination in baseball could throw from here to there to tag second in 2.9 seconds.”

Metro was in baseball for over 40 years. He says, “I found it was impossible to throw some other guys out also,” but he is talking about Ricky and only Ricky.

It is a less-bashful but more serious quote than Bird’s now mythologized line about Jordan being God disguised as a basketball player.

Jordan was more like a perfectly created basketball player than a freak of athletic nature. He was really more of a competitor than a true natural athletic beast, even though he is, of course, in the top 10 percentile of athletes to ever walk the earth. His numbers were excellent always, and for me that killer instinct was most perfectly captured in the 1997 NBA Finals, game one, in Chicago, against Utah when he buried a shot over Bryon Russell - this is not the Game 6 winner in 1998 - and the whole crowd knew it was in, and Jordan was fist-pumping before the shot hit twine.

Jordan’s career has been rehashed and rehashed and that’s not the point here.

The point is that Jordan and Henderson were, to my brother and I, the first examples of a great athlete who was better to us than the numbers - even if the numbers were there and real.

When we were young we had Henderson baseball cards and Jordan basketball cards to the ceiling, they’re still in that house, somewhere. We didn’t bleed with them day-by-day the way we do now with our teams, or at-least as I do with the Twins. We had lives outside of sports, as we do now, but they were more entwined in our life then. They were more a part of us. Jordan and Henderson were more like our favorite pet than our favorite athlete. We identified with them so much that they became like family, even if they never knew it.

I remember when Jordan came back the first time and there was fear that he wouldn’t be as great. I remember him hitting the game-winner in Atlanta. I remember him scoring 55 in NYC - I watched that game with my mom, and cheered like mad when he dished off the game winner to one of his white centers.

But for a moment there, as a fan I was scared for Michael Jordan. I was young enough to not realize that Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player to step on the court. I, a boy from Dallas Center, was scared for Michael Jordan, playing hoops in NYC. I will never, not ever, feel that way again.

It kind of disappoints me that no one will ever capture my attention the way MJ did, I wonder if my brother feels the same way. There is something pure that is lost about watching and cheering for athletes as we get older. Maybe it’s because we can no longer pretend to be them. When I shoot baskets today, I rarely say, “Jordan!” as the shot leaves my fingers. I doubt that my brother slides into third anymore at all, and certainly not head-first like Ricky did.

I bitch more about athletes now, I bitch about contracts and their responsibilities at the plate, their inability to get the bunt down or get the last out in the eighth inning. I watched Chris Paul the other night, and he was amazing to me, but it was more in an analytical way - he was by no means conceptual to me.

When we are young we can dream about things that we do not understand even though they are right in front of us. We can think about our favorite ball player and our parents and our brother and they are right there, but they are new and they are invigorating and they shape and mold us. But, we age and as we gain self awareness we learn that people, in all their forms, are just people. Our parents are still our parents and they are still magical but less so. And our brothers and sisters are still there and they are unique and still amazing to us, but less so. And our friends and relatives and our classmates and co-workers they all come and go and change as years move on, and athletes are no different.

We still can invest in them and heave heavy breaths when they are swinging the bat, or throwing the ball, or shooting the jumper, but it will never be the same as it was when we were young, and enthralled, and our eyes stayed open every second we saw them.

The Twins were swept for the first time this season after Toronto pulled out a 3-2 win in 11 innings on Thursday afternoon. It is the Twins third three-game losing streak of the season and they find themselves, again, at .500, 20-20.

The Cleveland Indians just completed a three-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics. In that series they pitched like it was 1964 and they are now 1.5 games in front of the Twins at 22-19.

It is not a good sign for the Twins that the Indians are getting extremely hot and their pitching is starting to look completely dominant. At the same time, I don’t think much of the Oakland A’s as a baseball team, regardless of record or statistical evidence.

What the Twins will soon find out is that .500 baseball will do nothing in this division or this league. They have to start rallying off consecutive wins of four, five and six. They have to start rallying off consecutive series wins; taking three out of four against Boston was great, losing three in a row to Toronto negates all of those positive feelings.

Also, the fact that the Twins were done in by boneheaded mistakes on the base-paths and on the field: including over-running stop signs at third base, errantly throwing pick-off attempts at first and third base, and being thrown out at home on three occasions and picked off at first, after a single, by the CATCHER, do not bode well for a team that has to do “the small things.”

What it reeks of right now, is last year.

Wind out of the sails, for now - let us see what Monday brings.

I often feel like, during the quiet times of a game, that I could be a great friend to a star athlete.

I think, ‘You know I bet Joe Mauer would appreciate my banter.’ Or, ‘Ron Gardenhire would probably like to have me around, just as an apprentice or as a young man to impart wisdom to.’

To make sure that this doesn’t seem slightly demented or predatory let me also make it aware that I have had similar thoughts about Edward Norton.

I watched 25th Hour and I said to an actual human friend sitting next to me, ‘Well, I think he would like to have me around for a day or two.’

Very little of this comes from a true sense of self-vanity. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I think nothing of myself, except that I am always right. But, I am also fully capable of saying, ‘Well, let’s agree to disagree on this.’

Similar thoughts also creep up when I’m watching any kind of documentary or reading any great piece of journalism. I will either think, ‘You need to get off of your ass and go do a story like that,’ or, ‘I bet Bob Dylan, even in his old age, would find me useful in some way.’

What is interesting about this is that I - as a human being who exists in a plane of understanding that I, as myself, fully understand and comprehend - can’t even remotely stand to have a nice person come up and spark a conversation with me in public.

I usually find myself thinking, ‘Jackass, go get some friends, I’ve got three, and I can barely stand talking to them.’ So, it is probably odd that I think that some of the most famous people in their respective fields would just take to me like wildfire.

There is also the fact that most famous people are probably smug as hell. I remember thinking that Norton must be one of the most down-to-earth guys in the world. Then I heard he was doing an adaptation of ‘The Painted Veil,’ and well, that was that.

Still, I love the idea of Edward Norton. I love that he could be both my poker buddy and my heroin dealer or maybe my half-crazy, neo-Nazi friend who still knows how to find redemption through the self-actualization process of attending prison for a few years.

That Edward Norton, the one who embodies all of those characteristics, that guy would most likely like me and my ideas.

So, would Joe Mauer.

Did you know that Joe Mauer likes to watch the Discovery Channel? Guess who else likes to do that (when he can afford cable)?

How about the fact that 2006 American League MVP Justin Morneau likes to go to the Jimmy John’s on Grand Avenue before games. Do you know who eats at Jimmy John’s on Grand Avenue about three times a month?

Somewhere in all of this, there has to be a connection.

I know it is misguided, but I was raised in an era that provokes these ideas. All of my friends are, in some way, famous. Lets be honest, they have webpages and things of that nature. I resisted the temptation to be involved in these trades (facebook, etc.) for as long as possible, until I finally realized I was great at it.

It allows me to be very popular in a semi-reality where I can interact and have relationships without actually interacting or having relationships.

I thrive.

It’s sort of like having a relationship with a woman, even if that woman is a faceless name in cyberspace and our relationship exists on a computer screen. It’s real, because I’m experiencing it, and in a way, she is experiencing it as well.

We thrive.

I don’t need to know anything about anyone in our current technological age. I only need to know what I can make of them, in my own mind.

Who knows, Joe Mauer may be one of the most boring people on earth, but of course, he’s also a batting champion and a millionaire, which gives him two-up on me. But, who’s to say that I would even like him. Or that there would ever be an instance where we would have anything to say to one another.

When Edward Norton finally left me at his California split-level over looking The Canyon to go to Japan to work on another Maugham adaptation, would I still like him? What if Matt Damon never even stopped by the house while I was there, what then?

The way I see it, Modern America allows me to put part of my own self doubt and need into a fictional plane where my lack of accomplishments, and sense of stilted ambition, can be easily accepted by those with accomplishments obtained through ambition.

Surely, eventually, I will get somewhere near that feeling of knowing my own self as well as Joe Mauer seemingly knows himself. To be that assured, that accomplished.

If I don’t though, that’s alright, I imagine. Eventually my gifts will be realized by someone, somewhere, and if they are, then someone else, somewhere else, can look to me and imagine how I would appreciate them, if only they were real to me.

I am a cheap man. There is no doubt about it. I am a broke man, and I am a cheap man. I save the dollar when possible. This means that when I go to a Twins game I buy cheap seats in the upper deck, and I then briskly move into section 218 after the first inning. 

So, last night when a scalper, a desperate, desperate scalper offered the Twins Girl and I two seats behind home plate for $50 (face value $55 per ticket) we pounced and sat down low.

I have sat down low before, on Father’s Day and that is it. I watched Johan Santana get kicked out of a Father’s Day game while his dad was sitting four rows in front of us. I remember feeling bad, not just because the Twins would lose and Santana had a rough start, but because it was in front of his father, and I could hear his father cursing at the umpire. But I was mainly sad because of how good I felt to be able to hear Santana on the field, yelling.

You don’t hear that in section 218. 

So, last night was a great night to start with because the seats were so spectacular. We were in section 121, right to the right of home plate, in row 28. Now, row 28 at the dome is really like row 23 because there’s something like five rows missing, so we were really in section 121, row 23. Great seats.

You can see the players in detail, see their faces, hear the bat on the ball, clearly. You can yell and feel like the umpire is really hearing it. Still, it gets aggravating sitting down low because you see the money around you.

There was a woman sitting in front of me who did not go off of her Iphone until the bottom of the fourth inning. She just sat there reading emails, paying no attention. I was irate, didn’t she understand where she was sitting? Of course she didn’t, she was careless, she had a huge mustard stain on her shirt - money was clearly not an object.

There was other strange behavior going on around section 121 on Friday night. At one point I went to the restroom, and as I am doing my thing a man slides up next to me. Now, I understand that the trough is a delicate place - there are rules that must be observed.

One: You can look down to line up your shot but then your eyes need to get out of there.

Two: Find a place on the wall to look at, and stay there.

Three: Keep a few feet distance between you and the man next to you - there’s a certain number of people that can fit in a trough section, don’t stretch that number.

Four: Shake, spin, and bounce. Get in and out quick, keep the eyes at shoulder level.

Five: Wash and leave.

So, when a man came up next to me, right next to me, his shoulder was essentially in my back, I was shook. When he then said, ‘That’s how you saddle up,’ my entire frame of mind about what a bathroom is and what the proper etiquette is, was imploded. 

I turned and looked into the man’s eyes, which were friendly and grey, and I said, ‘Well, that’s certainly one way.’

I shook, spun and ran out.

The Twins Girl couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to talk about anything when I sat back down.

But that wasn’t the only earth shaking thing to happen on Friday night. The Twins got an early lead, blew it, and they went from the fourth to the eighth inning without mounting any kind of real threat. Adam Everett hit some balls for extra bases; Joe Mauer stayed hot; Carlos Gomez continued to impress. But the real magic, as everyone knows, came in the ninth. 

Delmon Young, single, stolen base.

Matt Tolbert, sac bunt.

Adam Everett, foul-out.

Carlos Gomez, epic walk, stolen base.

Mike Lamb, epic at-bat, Texas leaguer, game winner.

Those are the small details, the bigger and more important aspects was the amazing tension in the three key at-bat’s.

Delmon Young was patient and precise in his swing, he ripped a few fouls down the right field line before finally getting squared away and hitting the single up the middle.

Carlos Gomez got ahead 1-0, fell behind on two foul balls, nice rips too, not over-aggressive, and then, amazingly took three straight balls. That at-bat, with two outs, gave one pure faith that something could happen in the ninth. Gomez then stole second without a throw, and then the real drama.

Mike Lamb stood up there and fell behind in the count, and just battled. When he took that hit the other way, we were sitting in the perfect seats to see that it would float right down the left-field line and drop in. It was a no-doubter, and the place exploded.

I have been at any number of games that have been won in the ninth inning by great Twins play, but that has always been from Joe Nathan’s side of things. This was, as far as I could remember, my first bottom of the ninth rally for a win. I have never seen a walk-off, and I jumped and raised my arms like I was at home-plate.

And, for the most part, I was, just 28 (or 23) rows away. 

In the past six years the Boston Red Sox have gone 563-409 and compiled a .579 winning percentage. They have won the American League East once but have won two World Series titles and appeared in three American League Championships Series.

In that same time the Minnesota Twins have gone 534-437 and compiled a .550 winning percentage. They have won four division championships, but appeared in only one American League Championship series and have gone 6-15 in 21 playoff games.Since 2002 Boston has become the toast of baseball, they are most certainly the team to of this decade, and with their amazing comeback against the New York Yankees in 2004, it would take a miracle to dethrone them of that title.

The Twins in that time have had amazing stretches of baseball, including an unheard of stretch of play in 2006, going 71-30 after a slow start to win the AL Central championship on the last day of the season. But continuous disappointments in the post season, and the departure of star players have made this decade a gift and a curse for Twins fans.

Still, since 2002 the Twins have played the Red Sox as well as any team in the league with a 21-16 record over those six years.There are also the side stories of the Twins release of David Ortiz and his turning into a modern day Paul Revere in Boston. Then this winter there was the talk of a potential blockbuster trade that would have sent Johan Santana to Boston for a number of young Red Sox prospects.

The trade never happened and Boston is probably happy to still have their young stars and their 22-14 record and first place position in the AL East. They are a solid team from top to bottom even with David Ortiz in an early season slump. The mix of youth and experience has also served the team well as young pitchers Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz have helped to fill the innings void of injured Curt Schilling.

The Twins are also most likely happy they weren’t after the more risky trade with the Mets that has brought in one of the most exciting players in Major League Baseball this year, in Carlos Gomez - who has made no one forget about Johan Santana but has made a lot of people forget about Torii Hunter and Jacoby Ellsbury.

Boston is surely the more well-rounded team but the Twins remain competitive in the Central and this series should be another in a long line of challenges for the Twins to prove that they are anything more than an inconsistent team.

Coming off a difficult loss on Thursday the Twins are only one game above .500 and have a one game lead in the division. Lets hope that success against Boston continues.